The Killing Season Uncut Read Online Free PDF Page B

neutrality.
    I faced the opposite challenge with Julia Gillard. She invited series producer Deb Masters and me to her home in Adelaidefor our second pre-interview. She came out to the driveway and welcomed us warmly. The surroundings were modest, the Australian way, I thought: no Blair- or Clinton-style fortunes for our ex-leaders. It was more relaxed than the first meeting, but not much. I was puzzled. Gillard’s close friends and colleagues attest to her great personal warmth and I expected to see it here especially, but she remained reserved. She has a reputation for humour but there were no jokes with us. I was curious about why she didn’t try and engage more, not least because the series was likely to reach an audience twenty times larger than the readership of the book she was writing.
    Gillard has spoken about her natural reserve. In
My Story
, she compares herself to Barack Obama in that regard. In our interview, Gillard said that engaging with the media did not come naturally.

    For me there’s always a bit of an intake of breath, going out and doing media.
    In Adelaide, sitting across the dining room table from us, right-hand man Bruce Wolpe at her side—keeping strict time—she looked quizzically at us at times, I thought looking for confirmation that we agreed Rudd’s behaviour was reprehensible. She and Rudd despised the media for taking sides when they were in power but now they looked, perhaps involuntarily, for signs we were ‘onside’. I hoped she would trust us a little more. I would need to get behind the reserve to reflect on her position as Australia’s first female Prime Minister.
    At the hotel in Harvard Square, Kevin Rudd made lists in a small notebook of the material I hoped to cover the next day, but mostly I think he was working me out. Wayne Swan’s view of Rudd’s relationship with the media was that every move was calculated to deliver a benefit down the track.

    Kevin was very close to many people in the media and he was very good at exchanging information off the record, to inreturn receive favourable coverage for things that he might do down the track. I’ve never seen a more effective media operator than Kevin, someone networking in the gallery, and if you like putting in place reservoirs of support for future activities in return for the provision of information.
    Rudd was easy company but we were wary of one another. It had taken a lot of negotiation to reach that point, not initially through any fault of Rudd’s. The irony was that Rudd was not difficult until gossip columnists started writing that he was. The first piece appeared in June, saying Rudd had refused to be interviewed by Chris Uhlmann, the ABC journalist who had started the series. The truth was that Julia Gillard had also refused. Rudd accused us of ‘leaking’ the information and wanted the ABC to investigate; he also wanted an undertaking there would be no further leaks, which was impossible since the information hadn’t come from us. We urged him to ignore it.
    Just as preparations for the interviews were being finalised, another piece appeared. Joe Aston, writing in the
Financial Review
, called the former Prime Minister ‘an unmitigated, unreconstructed tosser’. He said Rudd had insisted I fly to the US for a pre-interview chat. The idea that an ABC budget would fund an overseas trip for a chat was laughable. I was appalled at the language but I hoped Rudd would ignore it. He didn’t. He wanted ABC managing director Mark Scott to get involved. It was a return to the old theme that the ABC had mistreated Rudd while Labor was in power. The relationship between the documentary team and Rudd’s staff was strained: the obvious point that we would not leak against our own interests carried no weight. While producer Justin Stevens dealt with terse emails from Rudd’s staff demanding further ‘investigations’, I stayed out of it.
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